They Call Me Daring

Chapter 42

Perhaps what remained of the disease in my mind kept me from blanking out completely. In my opinion, that just made it worse.
I couldn't move. At all. I froze with my eyes open, a rag doll. My senses were blurred, and yet I stayed conscious to a point. I felt my body being slung over the shoulder of the man I had grown to hate. My head being banged carelessly against the window- multiple times.
Down the ladder. I was terrified he was going to drop me and let every bone in my body break- and I would be able to do nothing about it. I was useless, immobile. I couldn't move!
Everything was fuzzy, the colors faded and muddled together. I heard a jumble of voices everywhere, but time had lost meaning. Laughter, that was what got me. They were laughing as they stuffed my 'lifeless' body into a black body bag that stunk of heavy, greasy rubber. They thought I was dead, and I was just about as good as. Everything was so messed up, it was hard for me to see the strangeness in the situation. And the horror.
Dimly, in the back of my mind, I recalled the part about displaying my body. God, that was sick. I would have grimaced, if I could have moved. Everything was confusing, and not real. It just seemed like a dream. But I knew it wasn't.
They had committed murder, I realized. I finally had something real to hold against Bill over there, as I felt them load me roughly in the back of the truck like a sack of potatoes. I couldn't even grunt. But they had tried to kill me! And they had succeeded- or at least that was what they thought. My heartbeat had slowed down to an almost nonexistent pace, and I could feel it's faintness in my numb body.
For once, I wanted it to pump faster. I needed adrenaline, right now. The human part of me was dying, I could feel my life force being sucked away by the poison. But obviously the other part of me was fighting back. It was repelling the poison, and I was actually thankful that I was bitten for the first time in my life. The monster was resisting the poison.
I willed my heart to beat faster, as I felt my eyes close of their own account. A truck engine started. Meg's face flashed again in front of my eyes. Like I said, it was a random order of events that made no sense. You can try and piece it together.
Whenever, wherever I saw her, though, Meg's face was the one thing that stayed with me throughout the whole ordeal. Everything else came and went, flashed by and I quickly forgot, while I was swirling around in my own word, not existing, but not completely gone. Holding on for dear life with every once of strength that remained.
Meg. I think I only glimpsed her face for a fraction of a second as they were cramming me into a body bag to hide the evidence. But it was the look on her face, I think that kept me going. As a constant reminder that someone out there still cared, even as everything else started to drip away.
The look on her face when she saw me being brutally thrown into the back of a truck. She actually thought I was dead, I could see it all written out on her face, over and over. She thought my last great plan had entirely epically failed... of course, it hadn't succeeded yet, either.
I felt my entire body going into cardiac arrest. Shutting down. My lungs had stopped working, but luckily, I didn't need air, relying on that other part of me I'd always tried to shove away. My heart was locking up, the rate of it's beating slowing and faltering, skipping. But I closed my eyes and drew on that rage that was still cowering in the darkest recesses of my mind. Let it take over for once. I was risking everything- the human part of me was at its weakest point over, sustained by the inhuman part itself. It would be so easy to go over completely and never come back...
But I knew, Liam was still fighting, somewhere. And would never stop.
I let go, and grasped for that fury, that rage buried deep inside. I needed that now- I needed to survive. How dare they do this to me. Pathetic humans. Tasty humans.
My heart rate sped up, just a little, and sounds floated in to me from my surroundings. Voices in the back of the truck. Somebody nailed my side with a heavy boot.
Rage tumbled through my veins, and I almost lost control. I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms until they bled, the pain bringing me back. My heart rate was growing steadier, harder, more powerful. Faster. I had to back off before it became too much. I... clenched my fists?
Another kick in my side. I closed my fists harder, trying to move. To tear open the ridiculous body bag and rip out their throats, to devour them all-
"Liam-" The voice came from outside. Somebody was talking about me. I jerked back to myself, and forced the monster away, driving it out of my mind, thinking soothing thoughts. Brining me back to myself.
My heart rate had steadied itself out, and, suddenly, I almost felt my insides shudder. And I took a breath. I was breathing. As oxygen reached my mind, everything clarified again, and I experimentally blinked. I was able to move again!
"-doing bad things." I caught another voice over the rumbling of the truck. "Tried to pull the wool over our eyes. Shows him!"
I felt rage bubbling up inside me. The truck lurched, and I felt myself tumbling sideways. I hadn't yet gained back full mobility in my arms, and I had to let myself roll. I thumped against the side of the truck, and now I felt a dull pain running down my arm. Somebody kicked me away in disgust, and I felt another pang of anger, which I forced down.
I needed to keep my head now.
Play dead, boy.
I felt the groans of disgust as the truck lurched again and I rolled the other way.
"Do you think the corpse is infected?" Someone said above me. I felt a sharp toe in my side, and I was rolled back to the middle. It disgusted me, the cool indifference they treated my 'body' with.
"No way to know. He never fully transformed, but we'll be using gloves anyway." Someone said.
"Didn't recognize 'im at first." I heard the voice of the hated bald man. "New haircut or somethin'. 'Specially in the dark."
I felt a heavy boot in my back, and I nearly howled in pain. But I couldn't even tense up- I had to be a dead body for anything to come from this, or it was all for nothing.
"Stop it!" I heard a cry, and my heart shuddered inside of me.
I couldn't stand to hear Meg's voice like that. She actually thought I was dead. That I had failed. That Liam Trackerson would never again do anything stupid, but was nothing but a lifeless body in a black bag in the back of a truck.
"He's a traitor, honey." I heard Maggie say comfortingly.
"Maybe he wasn't!" She said, and I listened intently over the sound of the rumbling truck. Where were we going anyway? "Did it ever occur to you that maybe he was doing all of what he did just for you?! To protect you!? And to thank him, you murder him!" Her voice cracked, and I wanted to be out of the ridiculous bag, there to comfort her like I always had. But I was dead.
"But why would he do that?" Somebody said, genuinely confused.
"Because!" Meg cried, and I felt infinite pity for putting her through this. She sobbed. "Maybe he was just a good person!"
The truck lurched to a halt, and I felt the bed shake as people hopped out. I heard Meg's sobs receding into the distance. And then-
BAM! Somebody nailed me one more time in the head for good measure, and it hit me right in the temple.
The lights went out.